Lemmings and the Filipino vote

I spent some part of the night engaging in a political discussion of  sorts and as most political discussions go, there was a bit of an argument over whether there was ‘wisdom’ in the votes cast by over thirteen million Filipino voters.

The common notion about democracy among Filipino masses is that whoever gets the most number of votes wins.

What is often times forgotten is that voting, in more mature democracies, is usually the terminal phase of a longer process wherein true political parties have vetted their respective candidates.

In the Philippines where political parties are mere ‘shell’ corporations, there is almost no vetting and if there were any vetting, it would be limited to those who have a real say in the party — like, for example, the person or persons who actually fund the party.

That isn’t to say that these political parties don’t undergo some kind of selection process, but it is to say that the selection process is premised on choosing the most winnable candidate and not the most capable one.

And I don’t think dissent is encouraged as most parties are organized under the leadership of the most powerful elected official and the body of the party is usually composed of lackeys or stooges.

Anyway,  the standard bearer of a Philippine political party is usually the product of negotiations and bargaining.  This is the reason why, for one reason or another, the person who doesn’t become the party’s standard bearer often joins the opposing party or creates his own.

If you have ever wondered why the program of governance or platform of governance of one party is similar to another party, it is because Philippine political parties are not founded and run based on principles.

All party platforms profess to end poverty, eradicate corruption, deliver speedy justice, provide jobs, end conflict, protect the environment, etcetera.

Better Philippines had once pointed out that this is exactly the reason why he has often demanded that candidates come up with a more detailed platform of governance.  Detailed, in the sense, that candidates should state exactly what they will do to address poverty, corruption, injustice, conflict, environmental degradation, etcetera.  In his figuring, this would be a better subject for debate rather than notions about character, faith, destiny, and almost purely philosophical subjects.

In any case, without principles and debates which test those principles, the voting public (granting that they can absorb anything beyond a familiar name and a good sob story)  has very little information with which to based their decision.  Without enough information, people are reduced to relying on hunches and even worse, instinct.

A philosophy professor I had in college said something about humans being guided by instinct and it was that instinct is primarily what guided animals.

And this leads us to the subject of lemmings and the wisdom of the Filipino vote in 2010.

Faced with the problems of overpopulation and food scarcity, lemmings are triggered by instinct to migrate and it is during this migration that most of them die in the process.

Here’s a little excerpt about lemmings from the Wikipedia:

The behavior of lemmings is much the same as that of many other rodents which have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter that their natural habitat cannot provide. Lemmings of northern Norway are one of the few vertebrates who reproduce so quickly that their population fluctuations are chaotic,[1]  rather than following linear growth to a carrying capacity or regular oscillations. It is unknown why lemming populations fluctuate with such variance roughly every four years, before plummeting to near extinction.

Lemmings became notoriously famous because of unsubstantiated myths that they commit mass suicide when they migrate. The myth may exist in more variations. In most forms it does not appear to claim a conscious suicide but rather accidental mass death due to various factors. However in popular culture the alleged behavior is usually referred to as “mass suicide” and hence discussed here as “mass suicide myth”.

Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat.[7] This fact and the extremely strong unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings may have contributed to the development of the myth.

Because of their association with this odd behavior, lemming suicide is a frequently used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.

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